At the time, Lincoln was running as the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate to replace incumbent Democrat Stephen A. Douglas in the U.S. Senate. He and Douglas both traveled the state throughout the summer and fall of 1858, delivering speeches in support of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in their respective parties and participating in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The local elections of 1858 were important to the senatorial race because members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate.

Lincoln received many requests to speak throughout the state, but both he and Douglas focused the bulk of their speaking engagements in central Illinois, where voters were neither strongly Republican nor strongly Democratic and the field was therefore the most competitive. For just a few examples of letters Lincoln received requesting that he deliver a campaign address in a particular district, see: Lawrence Weldon to Abraham Lincoln; James H. Reed to Abraham Lincoln; William D. Henderson to Abraham Lincoln; Ansel Tupper to Abraham Lincoln.

Because the enclosure Judd references has not been located, it is not possible to know which Illinois district was then requesting that Lincoln alter his speaking schedule to visit them.

In the end, in Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the General Assembly and Douglas ultimately won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Despite his loss, Lincoln’s participation in the senate race—and in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in particular—propelled him to national prominence and helped him win the presidential contest of 1860.